Resumen de Patrioti o traditori? L’ufficialità della Marina delle Due Sicilie nell’estate del 1860
The crisis of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies is an historical research topic that lends to focus on the intertwining among civil war, State crisis and construction of new nations, issues that have monopolized in recent decades the attention of many historians. It is within such historical and historiographical framework that should be read the history of the Neapolitan Navy, that we can consider in many ways a singular case. Its officers, as holders of portions of legitimate power, chose deliberately and compactly (with some exceptions) to move against, theBourbons and came along with Garibaldi and the Piedmont, earning for this reason the disdain from many pro-Bourbons partisans. Giacinto de’ Sivo described them as traitors to their homeland, a judgment that, thanks to the lack of historiographical production on the subject, is more or less survived until today. Were they patriots or traitors? These categories have been outdated by current historical research. The question is, rather, why they, denying the logic of the struggle for power, made a choice thatappeared to their contemporaries, regardless if they were Bourbons’ partisans or not, equally inexplicable.
